Celebrating Unky Grant and the death of a camera

Last weekend we traveled to Denver to see Uncle Grant's Senior Recital and celebrate his upcoming graduation from the U of Denver. All the Ferrises were there, and also Great-Grandparents Aloise, Carol, and Keith. What fun we had. One of the nights we were there, we had dinner at a very nice bar/restaurant and celebrated together in the awesome shirts Uncle Adam made for this event ("Wiener" being Uncle Grant's derogatory nickname growing up, haha).

We struggled with the 2-hour difference between Eastern and Mountain time, but with careful nap management we were able to get the kids to stay up much later than they were used to without melting down too much. It helped we had grandparents and uncles and aunts to keep them entertained.

At some point in the evening, someone gave this guy the camera.

A portrait of the artist, with football mustache.

So we got a lot of pictures that look like this. Actually, I tried to include a picture of everyone who was there in this post, but every single picture of Grandma Susie looked like this, sorry Grandma.

I have to admit, the "three feet from the ground" perspective is interesting. Somewhat artistic.

Will's favorite subject of the evening was his sister. He quickly discovered the fun of trying to get Hallie to look at the camera for a picture.

Shortly before dinner, our camera was unceremoniously retired. Will was getting a closeup shot of Hallie, this happened, the camera hit the ground and wouldn't work anymore. Here is the very last picture from that camera:

Lookin' good Gramps.

Don't worry, we were due for a new camera and I already ordered a sweet new one which should be delivered in a week or so. The new camera includes two features which should be very useful for pictures of the kids: a "Smart Portrait System" which uses facial recognition software and delays taking the picture until the subject in the picture smiles; and a "Sports Continuous Scene Mode" which allows taking 10 pictures per second for a couple seconds (this will be very useful for bath pictures which are always a fraction of a second's worth of movement away from perfection). In the meantime, I have quite a collection of pics that Aunt Jenna took on her camera and lots from the last month or so to post yet.